


Brush Strokes

by jade-1459 (Jade)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade/pseuds/jade-1459
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Staring down at party taking place below him, Lorne's fingers itched of a brush and paints.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brush Strokes

**Author's Note:**

> This was written the SGA Secret Santa for theeverdream(LJ).

Leaning over the balcony to look down on the revelry below, Lorne watched the way they reached and touched and connected without ever moving apart. The music and the sunshine adding atmosphere, colours reflecting from the stained glass, scattering all the shades of a rainbow over upturned faces.

Water colours, he decided. If he were to paint this scene, he'd use water colours. They would bleed and blend; lines soft and overlapping. Bright colours, splashing yellows and soft gold shifting to blues and greens, slashed with just touches of red along the edges.

But as he caught faces in the crowd, Lorne realized that to truly capture the heart of Atlantis, he'd need to mix mediums. Water colours might work well for putting this particular moment to memory on a canvas, but it just wouldn't do to capture it all.

The idea had been kicking around in the back of his mind for a while now. Started with that first painting he'd done of Atlantis. Painting was something he hadn't done in years until their first Sunday. It had started out as something he did only with his mother. Those handful of hours in a week that were theirs and theirs alone. But as he'd grown older, after his father had walked out on them, painting had become an outlet. His one form of pure expression that even his sisters wouldn't dare touch.

And staring down at party taking place below him, Lorne's fingers itched of a brush and paints, longed for a canvas as large as he could lay his hands on.

"What are you doing up here?"

Lorne jumped a little and snapped his head around to catch sight of Sheppard leaning against a wall not too far from him. The casual tilt of his hips, the slight slouch of shoulders, untamed hair, and the slightest of smirks changed all that. Pencils and charcoal and an oversized drawing pad.

That's how he would put John Sheppard to the page.

Shadows and shades mixed with dark lines and rough edges.

Turning back to his view over the balcony edge Lorne answered, "Soaking up the atmosphere."

He heard the rustle of clothing as Sheppard stood up, moved away from the wall. Lorne didn't need to turn back to know Sheppard's hands were in his pockets, thumbs hooked along the pocket openings, that his head was tilted just a little to the left, body open and easy. "Should come down to the floor. You're missing a hell of a party."

~*~*~

It took a little creativity and side stepping, but Lorne was able to put in a requisition for art supplies.

Water colours, oil paints, acrylics, charcoal, drawing pencils, inks, pens, pastels, sketch pads.

More importantly he was able to convince someone, somewhere, somehow, that sending several rolls of canvas would be a good idea.

It took a little while. But eventually, Lorne had the supplies he needed to start up his own studio.

He just needed to find a place to actually set up that studio.

And then wait for his orders to start coming in.

~*~*~

 _"Atlantis. This is the Daedalus. Permission to unload supplies?"_

Chuck clicked the com open and answered, "You've got that all clear Daedalus."

 _"Is Major Lorne available, Atlantis?"_

Lorne stood a little straighter, shoulders squaring. "Lorne here, Daedalus. What can I do for you?"

 _"I've got a couple of crates with your name on them, Major. Where should they be dropped?"_

Lorne cut a look to Chuck, who quickly found something else to do to make himself busy. Lorne he'd no illusions. He was still on a open line with the ship, Chuck could hear everything that was being said. But that unspoken little queue from of the other man was enough. Chuck would forget anything he heard until Lorne gave a signal.

It was refreshing – and frightening.

How many secrets did Chuck keep?

 _"Major?"_

"There's an empty room in one of the south west towers. Section C-73, level eight."

 _"Consider it done, Major. Caldwell out."_

~*~*~

The first thing Lorne did when he was finally off duty was make an excuse to escape.

By the time he finally extracted himself from his team and the senior staff, all Lorne wanted to do was crawl under the covers and sleep for a week. Instead, he forced himself into the transporter and hit the destination pad to spit him out four corridors and one level down from the room Caldwell had unloaded his crates.

When the door swished open, Lorne felt tears burning in his throat.

There were crates stacked on crates, piled with boxes in that room. Four large rolls of uncut canvas leaned together in a corner with a half dozen rolls of paper. Solid lengths of wood that could be cut to any desired length to build the frames to stretch out the canvas.

Stepping into the room, more lights came on. More crates came into view.

Lorne strode over to the first open and tore off the protective plastic to read the label.

Primers.

Moving to another stack of crates, reading another label – oils paints.

And another – water paints.

Another – acrylics.

And on and on it went.

Pencils, chalks, brushes of every known make a verity, charcoal, more paints, drawing pads, inks, pens, sharpeners, erasers, knives, rollers, paint pans, pastels, drop cloths, a traditional 35mm film camera, with rolls of film, and so much more. Far more than he'd asked for.

And in one of the boxes that he carelessly tore into, an envelope.

Inside, a sheet of paper with a single line and a name.

 

 _Paint the sky with all the colours in your heart._

 _Mom_

 

~*~*~

"So you want to take the leave you've been collecting," Sheppard stated.

Lorne looked up from his side of desk and the forms he was trying to get through. He was about ready to break someone's hand – right or left completely depended on which one they wrote with – because he could not, for the life of him, read the chicken scratch scrawl.

Who ever thought to make a paperless environment for Atlantis by uploading all the forms to tablets to be filled out should be brought around back, shot twice in the head (just to make sure) and pushed off the edge into the ocean surrounding them.

"Yes," Lorne eventually answered when he realized he'd been scowling at the other man.

Sheppard blinked then. "You want to take _all_ of your collected leave."

"Yes," Lorne repeated.

"In one shot," Sheppard stated, as though to clarify.

"Yes."

Lorne watched as Sheppard licked his bottom lip and wished he'd brought along one of the sketch pads. Sheppard couldn't be contained in a canvas or two or three. Lorne would need an entire sketch pad to just begin to scratch the surface of the other man. Each expression unique and deserving of its own sketch. And he still wouldn't do justice.

"There a problem I should know about?" Sheppard eventually asked.

Lorne blinked and backed away a little. "No, sir," he said and watched the light frown crease Sheppard's brow – the one that always appeared when Lorne fell back on formalities with him. "Just got a project I want to get done and I don't want to end up half ass-ing my way through trying to do both."

The frown changed, from annoyance to mild curiosity. "Staying in the city?"

"Of course," Lorne shrugged. "We get an emergency, and I'll still come running to keep the shit from hitting you too hard in the face."

~*~*~

Dressed in worn jeans and well washed t-shirt, Lorne had packed for an extended stay.

A bag with a couple changes of clothes, bottles of water and MREs.

He'd dragged a cot from a room down the hall into the Studio – tossed a pillow with sheets and blankets over it. There was a working bathroom with shower in a connecting room.

He had everything he needed in that room and nearly fourteen weeks of leave to spend in it. Not that he would be spending _all_ of his time in the Studio. He'd eventually have to head back down to the mess to get more food, make contact with others to show them he was still alive and well, and hadn't been swallowed whole by some random Ancient device.

Lorne spent the better part of three days cutting and fitting canvas to stretchers and frames, priming the canvas for oils and acrylics. While he waited for primers to set, he started on the study pieces, laying left over cuts of canvas onto boards and gluing them down in the back.

Those he experimented with. Used pastels and charcoal on untreated canvas to see what kind of effect they'd have. To see what kind textures and patterns would find their way to the surface. By the time the main canvases were set, Lorne had an impressive collection of smaller ones. Mostly just the symbols from the Atlantis DHD, one of the Atlantis Stargate, the Pegasus patches they all wore on their uniforms, the Pegasus constellation, and so on and so forth.

He'd found a box filled with nothing except hooks and other implements to hang the smaller projects on the wall. Sticky hooks, screw hooks, spools of wire to help hang any of the large pieces.

Collapsing onto the cot he'd brought in, Lorne turned his head to look at large frame leaning against the opposite wall. He was going to stretch a canvas over that wooden frame. He was going to prime it and polish it and prime it again, until the surface would be perfect. And then he was going to paint Atlantis in all her glory on its surface. It would be the center piece.

The Heart of an entire display that no one was ever going to see.

~*~*~

Hours moved into days which stretched into weeks.

Lorne forgot the passage of time in the Studio. Days or nights, it didn't matter. Atlantis made sure he had enough light. Ventilation kicked in when the fumes of paint and primers and chalk dust got thick. Temperature adjusted and stayed steady and readjusted.

He forgot about things like sleep and food. Only showered when his hair felt stiff from running paint and charcoal and pastel covered fingers through it. Shaved only when he couldn't stand the scruff, brushed his teeth when the fuzzy coating made him want to bite out his own tongue.

He was so absorbed in his work, that he didn't hear the door swish open behind him. Lorne was up on a ladder, painting the under bellies of clouds at sunset. Painting the central piece had become an obsession. He worked on it constantly. Done completely in oils, he'd worked on other pieces as the layers set before he went back to it, adding more colours, new shapes and depths.

He was just putting the finishing touches of the palest pink to one of clouds when he heard a gasp and a soft exclamation of _Jesus Fucking Christ_ behind him.

Lorne jerked back, startled from his concentration, and dropped his paints of the drop cloth below him just as he slid down six rungs of the ladder trying to figure out who had invaded the Studio.

Sheppard was standing just inside the room. Completely oblivious to Lorne's slip down the ladder. He had eyes only for the massive stretch of canvas Lorne had been working on. His eyes were wide and filled with a kind of shocked awe. Lips parted, face slack.

Lorne felt like his chest had been torn open, his heart beating wildly in the still air of the room. Art was his form of self expression. And if Sheppard was just half as insightful as he pretended not to be, he'd be able to read Lorne like an open book.

Slowly stepping off the ladder, Lorne turned to look at the painting he'd been working on for weeks now. Looked beyond the colours and the shapes and the bits and pieces he knew were there to the whole of it.

"I had no idea..." Sheppard began and stopped, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and tilted his head to one side to consider the painting from a different angel. "This was the project you wanted to work on?"

Lorne glanced down at the floor, rubbed the hair at the back of his neck and shuffled his feet. "Yeah," he answered, a little embarrassed.

Glancing up under his lashes, he watched Sheppard take a look around the room, eyes stopping on portraits and scenes and sketches. "I don't think fourteen weeks was enough time."

Lorne finally looked up and took a good look around the room himself.

There were portraits of nearly every member of the expedition scattered everywhere. All of them done with the materials that suited the subject best. Pastels for Parrish, surrounded by his plants. Heavy chalks for Ronon. Inks for Teyla. Colouring pencil for Dr. Weir, charcoal for Dr. McKay, pens for Dr. Zelenka, water colours for Dr. Keller, finger paints for Mr. Woolsey, and on and on. All around the room.

"Life time wouldn't be enough," Lorne finally answered.


End file.
